Ara A Francis
Biographic Data
| ID | 656611 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ara A Francis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ara A |
| FAMILY NAME | Francis |
| SIGNATURE | FRANCIS A A |
| AFFILIATIONS | College of the Holy Cross |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5626-5652 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 36 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Critical approaches to death studies: A Conversation
Death Positivity, White Respectability: A Critical History of Cicely Saunders and the Hospice Model of Care
Social histories of hospice focus on 1960's counterculture and emphasize the progressive, anti-institutional bent of death positive activists. Our accepted historical narrative is that what began as a radical, grassroots movement to humanize end-of-life care gradually became part of the mainstream medical marketplace, making it difficult for hospice to fulfil its potential. This essay complicates that narrative with a close, critical reading of C…
The Staying Power of Analytical Distance: Lyn Lofland's Contribution to the Sociology of Death, Dying, and Bereavement
Lyn Lofland's The Craft of Dying remains integral to the small canon of texts that sociologists have written in death studies. This article uses her work to consider how we approach the politics of knowledge production in our own scholarship today. Lofland wrote at an 'analytical distance,' which to say that she resisted adopting the taken-for-granted assumptions that underpin everyday meanings. Her refusal to adopt in her work popular understand…
Editors' Introduction to Lyn Lofland's Intellectual Legacy
In this editors' introduction to the special issue honoring the work of Lyn Lofland, we familiarize the reader with Lofland's scholarship and outline the themes taken up by this project. We argue that because Lofland's scholarship exemplifies a particular tradition within late 20th-century American symbolic interaction, it serves as a model for those of us working in the same vein, while also offering a steelman case against which we can consider…
Social Constructionism in the Symbolic Interactionist Tradition
This chapter offers a symbolic interactionist’s introduction to social constructionism in three parts. First, the author reviews Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality and considers its relationship to early symbolic interactionist thought. While the two perspectives shared assumptions about the ever-emergent quality of social life, it is argued, the constructionist perspective offered a conceptualization of social …
Gender and Legitimacy in Personal Service Occupations: The Case of End-of-Life Doulas and Death Midwives
The emerging occupations of end-of-life doula and death midwife are part of a growing sector of personal service jobs. Designed to support, educate, and empower dying people and their loved ones, these new roles entail both the commodification of women’s unpaid labor and a repositioning of the paid work typically done by marginalized women. This study examines the identity talk of 19 occupational pioneers and focuses on the relationship between g…
Discreditable Stigma
A discreditable stigma is an attribute, characteristic, or identity that is socially devalued but can be concealed from or made invisible to others. People who are “marked” with one or more of these attributes typically come to occupy a lower social standing. Attributes such as physical illnesses, mental illnesses, identities, and significant or traumatic life experiences are considered to be discreditable in many cultural contexts. Because the d…
On (Not) Practicing What We Preach
What should sociologists do when their everyday lives are at odds with their sociological values? Authors Ara Francis and Jill Bakehorn examine the contradictions that stem from trying to live sociologically and consider how scholars might put personal inconsistencies to good use
The Dynamics of Family Trouble: Middle-Class Parents Whose Children Have Problems
Because families are primary venues for self construction, they are also common sites of identity disruption, loss, and inner turmoil. Sociologists have a long tradition of studying the personal effects of troublesome family circumstances such as separation or divorce, illness, and death. However, scholars of these topics contribute to separate lines of research and rarely build on one another's work. Drawing from interviews with middle-class par…
Stigma in an era of medicalisation and anxious parenting: How Proximity and Culpability Shape Middle-Class Parents' Experiences of Disgrace
This study examines the stigma experiences of middle-class parents whose children have physical, psychological and behavioural problems. Qualitative interviews with 34 mothers and 21 fathers demonstrate that parents experience two types of stigma: courtesy stigma and the stigma of being a bad parent. While the former stems from close social proximity to stigmatised children, the latter stems from ostensible culpability for children's problems. Bo…
Stigma in an era of medicalisation and anxious parenting: How Proximity and Culpability Shape Middle-Class Parents' Experiences of Disgrace
This study examines the stigma experiences of middle-class parents whose children have physical, psychological and behavioural problems. Qualitative interviews with 34 mothers and 21 fathers demonstrate that parents experience two types of stigma: courtesy stigma and the stigma of being a bad parent. While the former stems from close social proximity to stigmatised children, the latter stems from ostensible culpability for children's problems. Bo…
The Dynamics of Family Trouble: Middle-Class Parents Whose Children Have Problems
Because families are primary venues for self construction, they are also common sites of identity disruption, loss, and inner turmoil. Sociologists have a long tradition of studying the personal effects of troublesome family circumstances such as separation or divorce, illness, and death. However, scholars of these topics contribute to separate lines of research and rarely build on one another's work. Drawing from interviews with middle-class par…
Critical approaches to death studies: A Conversation
Death Positivity, White Respectability: A Critical History of Cicely Saunders and the Hospice Model of Care
Social histories of hospice focus on 1960's counterculture and emphasize the progressive, anti-institutional bent of death positive activists. Our accepted historical narrative is that what began as a radical, grassroots movement to humanize end-of-life care gradually became part of the mainstream medical marketplace, making it difficult for hospice to fulfil its potential. This essay complicates that narrative with a close, critical reading of C…
The Staying Power of Analytical Distance: Lyn Lofland's Contribution to the Sociology of Death, Dying, and Bereavement
Lyn Lofland's The Craft of Dying remains integral to the small canon of texts that sociologists have written in death studies. This article uses her work to consider how we approach the politics of knowledge production in our own scholarship today. Lofland wrote at an 'analytical distance,' which to say that she resisted adopting the taken-for-granted assumptions that underpin everyday meanings. Her refusal to adopt in her work popular understand…
The Dynamics of Family Trouble: Middle-Class Parents Whose Children Have Problems
Because families are primary venues for self construction, they are also common sites of identity disruption, loss, and inner turmoil. Sociologists have a long tradition of studying the personal effects of troublesome family circumstances such as separation or divorce, illness, and death. However, scholars of these topics contribute to separate lines of research and rarely build on one another's work. Drawing from interviews with middle-class par…
Stigma in an era of medicalisation and anxious parenting: How Proximity and Culpability Shape Middle-Class Parents' Experiences of Disgrace
This study examines the stigma experiences of middle-class parents whose children have physical, psychological and behavioural problems. Qualitative interviews with 34 mothers and 21 fathers demonstrate that parents experience two types of stigma: courtesy stigma and the stigma of being a bad parent. While the former stems from close social proximity to stigmatised children, the latter stems from ostensible culpability for children's problems. Bo…
On (Not) Practicing What We Preach
What should sociologists do when their everyday lives are at odds with their sociological values? Authors Ara Francis and Jill Bakehorn examine the contradictions that stem from trying to live sociologically and consider how scholars might put personal inconsistencies to good use
Discreditable Stigma
A discreditable stigma is an attribute, characteristic, or identity that is socially devalued but can be concealed from or made invisible to others. People who are “marked” with one or more of these attributes typically come to occupy a lower social standing. Attributes such as physical illnesses, mental illnesses, identities, and significant or traumatic life experiences are considered to be discreditable in many cultural contexts. Because the d…
Gender and Legitimacy in Personal Service Occupations: The Case of End-of-Life Doulas and Death Midwives
The emerging occupations of end-of-life doula and death midwife are part of a growing sector of personal service jobs. Designed to support, educate, and empower dying people and their loved ones, these new roles entail both the commodification of women’s unpaid labor and a repositioning of the paid work typically done by marginalized women. This study examines the identity talk of 19 occupational pioneers and focuses on the relationship between g…
Social Constructionism in the Symbolic Interactionist Tradition
This chapter offers a symbolic interactionist’s introduction to social constructionism in three parts. First, the author reviews Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality and considers its relationship to early symbolic interactionist thought. While the two perspectives shared assumptions about the ever-emergent quality of social life, it is argued, the constructionist perspective offered a conceptualization of social …
Critical approaches to death studies: A Conversation
Death Positivity, White Respectability: A Critical History of Cicely Saunders and the Hospice Model of Care
Social histories of hospice focus on 1960's counterculture and emphasize the progressive, anti-institutional bent of death positive activists. Our accepted historical narrative is that what began as a radical, grassroots movement to humanize end-of-life care gradually became part of the mainstream medical marketplace, making it difficult for hospice to fulfil its potential. This essay complicates that narrative with a close, critical reading of C…
The Staying Power of Analytical Distance: Lyn Lofland's Contribution to the Sociology of Death, Dying, and Bereavement
Lyn Lofland's The Craft of Dying remains integral to the small canon of texts that sociologists have written in death studies. This article uses her work to consider how we approach the politics of knowledge production in our own scholarship today. Lofland wrote at an 'analytical distance,' which to say that she resisted adopting the taken-for-granted assumptions that underpin everyday meanings. Her refusal to adopt in her work popular understand…
Editors' Introduction to Lyn Lofland's Intellectual Legacy
In this editors' introduction to the special issue honoring the work of Lyn Lofland, we familiarize the reader with Lofland's scholarship and outline the themes taken up by this project. We argue that because Lofland's scholarship exemplifies a particular tradition within late 20th-century American symbolic interaction, it serves as a model for those of us working in the same vein, while also offering a steelman case against which we can consider…
Sociology (8 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Social Psychology (3 works) · Social Psychology (3 works) · Aesthetics (2 works) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (2 works)